The Pathway to Spiritual Growth

How does your spiritual path look?

It is the path of letting go. In the last blog, What Is Faith? I made the point that faith is the Divinely-given capacity to let go - to live in uncertainty, to give up control. The ego in you will almost always deceives you by creating the feeling within that, if you let go, life will unravel...you'll lose control...even great and terrible things could occur. Be stoic. Be certain. Which is why, when you meet someone who rigidly "believes" a certain way - dogmatically asserting, "This is 'truth' - this is the way and only way you must believe! I know...I'm right!" and so they make great and lofty pronouncements, dictating what everyone must believe and then hiding further still behind a default clause - "Well, the Bible says it...so I just believe the Bible...that settles everything!"

It actually settles nothing, however. What it does do is reveal a lot about the lack of faith...what really is the driven-ness of fear within that person who mistakenly thinks they are being faithful when all they're really doing is disguising their fear with platitudes that sound faithful. The truth is, they are terrified within that, if they should let go...if they were to acknowledge or, worse, accept the uncertainty of all things...even their belief system...even the beliefs their religious system say are infallible...they fear they will come apart at the seams. That their faith will unravel, too.

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But, the wonderful irony is, it is only when you give in and give up, life, instead of unraveling, is sewn together by the very faith, and beliefs, you release. In other words, when you give up control you are actually in greater control...and, you are more at peace, too.

Now this truth applies everywhere - it's one of those laws of life that I speak about across the country.

For example, sales people are vastly more effectively at selling when they get to that place where they say, "I want to win. I just don't have to." Ponder this.

And, the same is true of your advancement along the spiritual path - what you might refer to as your growth in Christ...or, your increasing consciousness.

Mark Nepo tells the ancient Chinese story of how monkeys were once caught in the wild. A small cage with an even smaller opening would be set up in the forest by trappers. Inside the cage a small bowl of rice would be placed. Soon enough, a monkey would smell the rice and reach inside to retrieve the bowl. Once fisting the bowl of rice, however, the monkey would discover its hand would no longer fit back through the opening. Consequently, the monkeys that were trapped were those monkeys who would not let go of the bowl of rice.